在IIS中托管时合并WCF服务库配置文件

Question

I have a number of WCF Service Libraries that each have their own App.config. I host these libraries in an ASP.Net project using serviceActivations / fileless. This ASP.Net project also has a web.config that is deployable.

Developers have been updating the App.config but not updating the web.config which causes deployment issues. To stop this from happening I thought I'd remove the App.Config's and centralize them to a single file. If I was hosting the services in a windows service I could just point them all to the same App.Config, but asp.net uses a Web.config.

Is there any way to solve this? It'd be nice if I could tell the service libraries to use the web.config, but some wizards such as the service reference wizard will create an App.Config file if it's not present.

Answer 1

It seems like you're looking for a technical solution (ie, some way to automate updating/using the Web.Config file vs the App.Config file), but I think you may gain more ground by process/training.

You mention that developers are updating the App.config file, but not the Web.config - if that's the case, how are they unit testing their changes? Since the libraries (if you're talking about DLLs) will never use their own App.config (or any config file, for that matter), the developers have to be updating the consuming application's config file.

Why not sit down with the developers and work out a process (working with them vs handing down a process from above will get you a lot further) with them that includes updating the Web.config as part of their unit testing? It should be a fairly straight forward copy and paste of the relevant parts of the config file.

There is quite possibly a technological way to do what you're looking to do (if I understand your question correctly), but I do think a process rather than a technical solution would be worth trying.